Finance director leaves after six years with city

After six years of working for Ridgecrest – three of them as the finance director – Tyrell Staheli finished his tenure Thursday at the helm the city’s finance departmentHe will be leaving for a private sector job in Nevada.“The main reason is to spend time with my family,” Staheli said. “This job requires a lot of work and lot hours and missing my family.”

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By Jack Barnwelljbarnwell@ridgecrestca.com

Ridgecrest Daily Independent - Ridgecrest, CA

By Jack Barnwelljbarnwell@ridgecrestca.com

Posted Sep. 7, 2012 at 7:00 PM

By Jack Barnwelljbarnwell@ridgecrestca.com

Posted Sep. 7, 2012 at 7:00 PM

RIDGECRESt

After six years of working for Ridgecrest – three of them as the finance director – Tyrell Staheli finished his tenure Thursday at the helm the city’s finance department

He will be leaving for a private sector job in Nevada.

“The main reason is to spend time with my family,” Staheli said. “This job requires a lot of work and lot hours and missing my family.”

Staheli first worked for the city as its budget officer before landing in the finance director’s chair three years ago. The job has been both rewarding and challenging.

“The main thing is being a public servant and being able to work for the people to try to create a better community,” Staheli said. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it but ultimately when things get accomplished that help out the public, I feel successful.”

Staheli came to Ridgecrest from a previous private sector job in Las Vegas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business management from Utah Valley State College.

His time in Ridgecrest has been a positive one, Staheli said.

“It’s a great community, working to get things done and has interaction and feedback from the public on what the council or city does,” he said.

The city also has great potential,“especially for the outdoors people to come out.”

While working in the finance department, he said it was a challenging task.

“It was a lot of hard work because the budget document is a political and polarizing document,” Staheli said.

During his tenure in the finance department, the budget has gone through what he described as tweaks in its presentation.

“I think this last revision is getting closer to what I envision a budget document, making it more transparent and easier to read for the public,” he said.

Staheli, along with others on city staff, steered the city through some tough financial times, primarily the loss of redevelopment funds after California put the kibosh on redevelopment agencies.

“That’s been difficult to balance that with the least impact to services as well as to employees,” Staheli said. “It’s a challenge and we weren’t a hundred percent successful from buffering the employees from the effects, but I think we did the best with what we had.”

For some, Staheli’s departure is seen as a major loss to the city.

“He’s the best I’ve ever seen since I’ve served on the council for sixteen years,” Mayor Ron Carter over the phone Thursday. “This is another major loss to the city.”

Page 2 of 3 - Carter said that Staheli was “always easy to work with” on budget items and projects.

“He was a very unique individual and always had a smile for you,” Cater said. “He made the easy to understand budgeting process.”

Carter said that Staheli, along with former City Manager Kurt Wilson, played a pivotal role after Ridgecrest played

Carter said if the city “didn’t have the best of the best” the city would have been a lesser place.

“Someone of the caliber like Tyrell or Kurt, you can’t replace,” Carter said. “You can only hope to replace them with people who have the potential to be as good.”

Council member Steven Morgan said that one comes to finally understand the frustration of preparing budget and “trying to constantly changing the format and visual presentation and just how difficult it is to do that.”

“He spent a lot of time at City Hall burning the midnight oil,” Morgan said.

Morgan said this was the case with many city staff trying to get things done to ensure the city ran smoothly.

“His greatest contribution to the city will be what some in the city think was his detriment,” Morgan said. “That was creating the budget documents in so many different forms so the public could understand them.”

Morgan said he would miss Staheli both as a friend and professionally.

“He’s going to be sorely missed,” Morgan said. “Not only was he a responsive department head but he always did what was asked of him.”

Morgan described his working relationship with Staheli as a positive one, often posing devil’s advocate questions on budget matters at various committee meetings.

“Whenever a member of the public came to the podium and asked questions,” Morgan said, “he would always look at me with a rye smile and it was like ‘we’ve got this.’”

Staheli’s replacement will be decided by interim City Manager Dennis Speer with direction from the council, according to Morgan.

“The council will have to decide as a body what direction to take for hiring the finance director,” Morgan said. That direction remains to be seen as decisions to need to be made.

The city is currently in the process of starting the search for a permanent city manager.

Staheli said that any good finance director would have a thick skin because of the nature of the job.

“You have those people who will disagree with your budgeting methods no matter what,” Staheli said.

Page 3 of 3 - For Staheli, he has left his mark on the city with what said he always tried to do and that it should continue aiming in that direction.

“My goal has been to be as transparent as possible,” he said. “So there’s no question in the public that the money is being spent appropriately and legally.”